by Skylar Finn
I groaned and squeezed the bridge of my nose as the memories came flooding back. “I should’ve known. You’re way too perceptive for your own good. Riley, listen. I need the money, okay? Your dad—”
“I’m not going to tell him,” Riley said. “And I don’t care that you’re not a real psychic. What I do care about is whether or not you believe me.”
“About the ghosts?”
“Yeah. Do you?”
I thought of the kamikaze vase in the kitchen of my suite. The prickle on the back of my neck whenever I traversed the hallways of King and Queens alone. The screams and hooded figures in the old wing. But that was Tyler and his friends, of course.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
Riley tugged me toward the exit of the treehouse. “Come on. I’m going to prove it to you.”
Riley hatched a plan in my suite. As I set up my main camera on a tripod in the bedroom, she fussed around in the kitchen. I framed the shot, trying to get as much of the room on screen as possible per Riley’s request. When she returned from the kitchen, it was with a steaming cup of hot chocolate.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I think I got my week’s worth of sugar content from one sip of your thermos.”
“This isn’t for you,” she declared as she set the mug on the bedside table. “It’s for her.”
“Her who?”
“The nice ghost,” she said. “Remember I told you they weren’t all bad?”
“Vaguely.”
She positioned the mug on the far corner of the table and turned the handle outward as if for someone else to pick up. “This one likes me. Well, I think she does. She also likes hot chocolate.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
I was growing used to the spinal shivers induced by Riley’s nonchalant confirmations of otherworldly apparitions at King and Queens, but that didn’t make them comfortable. “So what do we do?” I asked her. “Wait until she shows up?”
“No, I’m exhausted,” Riley said. She was already dressed in a pair of my pajamas, the too-long satin sleeves pushed up to her elbows. She climbed into the bed and curled up under the duvet cover. “She’s shy. She won’t show up unless we’re asleep. Come on.”
“A slumber party with a ghost,” I grumbled as I joined Riley. “Color me ecstatic.”
“Is the camera on?” she asked, punching a pillow into a mound of feathers before jamming it under her neck like a tire chock.
“Yup. It’s ready to go. If anything happens, we’ll have it recorded.”
“Perfect. Night.”
She scooted right up next to me and coiled up in a little ball of pink satin beneath the sheets. Her feet were freezing. Within seconds, she was snoring. I turned off the big lamp and rolled over to get comfortable. The mug of hot chocolate was right at eye level. Steam rose lazily into the air like a secret invitation to Riley’s ghostly friend. I clenched my eyes shut. Everything was fine. Everything was fine.
In the morning, the camera beeped like a whiny child to remind me it was out of memory. Not even the thick feathers of the pillow could mute the incessant chirp. Grudgingly, I freed myself from the warmth of the duvet and stepped out of bed into a cold, sticky puddle. The mug of hot chocolate had fallen off the bedside table and splattered its contents across the bedroom carpet. I whirled around and patted the lump on the other side of the bed. It wasn’t Riley. It was a stack of pillows. Riley was gone.
“No, no, no,” I murmured, wiping my feet on a clean section of the carpet as I crossed the room and wrenched the camera off the tripod. I rewound to the beginning of the memory card and hit play.
The scene was normal at first. There was Riley setting the hot chocolate on the table and climbing into bed. There was me, rolling around beneath the covers as I tried to get to sleep. After a while, I stopped moving. I fast-forwarded through the footage until movement caught my eye. Once or twice, it was me or Riley changing positions, but around three in the morning, something else happened.
Riley sat up out of nowhere, her back as straight and stiff as an operating table. She stared at the door to the bedroom. Slowly, her gaze tracked something across the room until she looked over my shoulder at the hot chocolate. The mug shifted a half-inch toward the edge of the table. Then it lifted straight into the air without anyone touching it.
I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the indescribable noise gurgling at the base of my throat and forced myself to keep watching the footage. Riley stared at the mug as it tipped slightly, almost like someone were drinking from it. When it fell, spilled, and bounced across the carpet, Riley shot out of bed and tore out of the room. I remained asleep and oblivious, alone with whatever had come to visit us last night.
7
Ididn’t think as I got dressed, throwing on the first pair of jeans and sweater I could find. It was only as I rode the elevator down to the lobby and caught a glimpse of my reflection that I realized the sweater—draped over the armchair in the bedroom—had been in the splash zone of hot chocolate. Dark droplets patterned the collar and shoulders of the creamy cashmere, but I didn’t care enough to go back up to the room and change. I didn’t want to be up there alone. With the camera tucked under my arm, I charged out of the elevator on the ground floor and ran into Detective Daniel.
“Whoa, there,” he said, steadying me by the shoulders. “Where’s the fire?”
“In the old wing,” I replied without thinking. “Excuse me, I have to find Riley.”
Daniel caught the sleeve of my stained sweater. “Slow down for a second, Lucia. Is everything okay? You’re sweating.” He examined his fingers, coated in the sugary remnants of hot chocolate. “And sticky. You’re also holding onto that camera for dear life. What’s going on?”
“It’s all true,” I said, the words spilling out of my mouth before I could stop them from sounding insane. “Everything Riley told me. The ghosts, the voices? She wasn’t lying. King and Queens is actually haunted.”
“Madame Lucia, what are you trying to tell me?”
I whacked his shoulder. “Shut up, you know I’m a fraud, but Riley’s not. I swear, Daniel. Look at this footage.” I presented him with the camera. “Press play. I can’t watch it again. I’m freaked out enough.”
He fiddled with the monitor’s touch screen. “There’s nothing here, Lucia.”
“What?”
He tilted the camera toward. “Nothing’s been recorded on this memory card. It’s blank.”
“No.” I checked for myself. Sure enough, the footage from last night was gone. “No! Are you serious?”
“This is a joke, right?” Daniel said. “You’re pulling my leg?”
“No, I’m not. It was right here! I watched the footage five minutes ago.”
“Hmm.” He scratched his head, ruffling his mane of black hair. “Hey, did you happen to make any progress with Riley? I need to get as much information on this investigation as possible. If the kid’s responsible in some way—”
My gaze snapped up from the camera. “That poor little girl watched her own mother die. She didn’t kill her. What kind of person are you to suggest that she would? Really, Detective Hawkins, what happened to you to make you so cynical? To completely disengage your emotions? Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. You leave that little girl alone.”
“I would never—”
“Leave her alone,” I said again. “Got it?”
Before he could reply, Riley tore through the lobby screaming. Tyler sprinted after her, his face, neck, and T-shirt drenched in blood. He stayed on his little sister’s heels but let her keep just ahead of him. With his long legs, he could catch her in a second, but he was getting a kick out of the chase.
“Run, little girl!” he cooed in a creepy tone. He stepped on the back of her shoe, causing her to stumble. She left the sneaker in the middle of the floor and took off as Tyler laughed. Daniel seized Tyler by the arm when the teenager passed, and Riley jetted off toward t
he Eagle’s View. The blood all over him was fake and tacky, made of corn syrup and red food coloring.
“You idiot—” Daniel growled.
“It was just a prank,” Tyler said.
I smacked him clean across the face. The slap echoed through the lobby as his sick smile dropped. For a second, he looked completely stunned. Then his expression morphed into one of rage. He lunged toward me. Were it not for Daniel’s solid grip, he would have surely taken me down.
“You stupid bitch,” he spat. “Slap me again. Do it!”
“Gladly!” I said but kept my distance. “Riley’s life is complicated enough without your asinine antics. Stay away from her.”
“You think you know Riley?” Tyler challenged. “Please. You haven’t even been here for a whole week, and she’s already got you wrapped around her little finger. Newsflash, Madame Lucia. That’s what she does. That’s what she did to my mom. That’s what she’s doing to my dad. Everyone thinks she’s so sweet and innocent. That little kid’s a freakin’ monster.”
“Shut up, Tyler.”
My hand cocked back of its own accord, but Daniel—holding Tyler steady—blocked the incoming blow with his forearm.
“Lucia, get out of here,” he ordered, pivoting around to force Tyler in the opposite direction.
“Me? What about him?”
“He’s an idiot,” Daniel declared. “But you knew that and you still let him get to you. Get out of here. Go cool off. Mr. Watson’s upset enough about this issue with Nick Porter. We don’t need to add assault charges to his list of things to worry about it.”
“But—”
“Go.”
I threw Tyler one last dirty look before leaving to find Riley. After last night’s run-in with whatever passed through my room, she was bound to be more than upset by Tyler’s prank. At the Eagle’s View, Karli rinsed out bar glasses.
“Riley snuck into the kitchen,” she said. “I’ve told her a hundred times not to go in there. The cooks don’t like it, and she could get hurt. What happened anyway?”
“Tyler.”
“Say no more.”
I gestured behind the bar. “Do you mind?”
“Be my guest.”
I ducked under the counter and pushed through the double doors into the kitchen. The room was hot and stuffy. Fresh bread and pastries rose in the ovens, sending the delectable scents of cinnamon and rising yeast into the air. The cook Xavier and his assistant Matisse jabbered in rapid French. A silver mixing bowl lay askew on the floor, pouring orange batter out of its mouth like a vomiting pumpkin. If their emphatic hand gestures were any indication, neither one was pleased with the situation in the kitchen that morning. When Xavier caught sight of me, he brandished a batter-covered spatula at me.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “I should have known that you would not be far behind. Get the strange little girl out of my kitchen before we dice her up and put her in the soup for lunch.”
“Threatening her isn’t going to help,” I said. “She’s already scared. That’s why she came in here in the first place. Where is she?”
Xavier mouth contorted as if he had smelled something unpleasant. “Je ne sais pas! She ran in so quickly, she knocked over my muffin mix!”
“Not the muffin mix,” I replied dryly.
“I was too disturbed by the waste to notice where she went,” he said. “Locate and evacuate her. Please.”
“Stop talking about her like she’s a rodent.”
“What is the difference between a little girl and a rat?”
“You’re not married, are you, Xavier?”
“Pah!”
As Xavier made Matisse clean up the mess of batter on the floor, I searched the industrial kitchen. With its many cabinets and pantries, it was the best place in the resort to play hide and seek, as long as the participants didn’t mind the increased likelihood of incurring injuries during the course of the game. A collection of sharpened knives, each longer than my forearm, was stuck to a magnet strip above the counter. The edges of the ovens were blazing hot, waiting for someone to lean on them for a moment too long. Heavy-duty pots and pans hung from a storage rack bolted into the ceiling. Xavier and Matisse handled the cookware with reckless nonchalance, causing the storage rack to swing to and fro. I gave the cooks a wide berth as I continued to look for Riley. Upon opening a cabinet in the far corner of the kitchen, a pair of eyes peered out at me from behind a massive open bag of white rice. Were it not for the light glinting off of Riley’s silver bracelet, I wouldn’t have known she was there.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Riley, everything’s okay now. Detective Hawkins caught your brother. He’s not going to bother you anymore.”
She curled up smaller, all but disappearing behind the rice. Across the kitchen, Xavier slammed a sauce pan into the metal tub sink, and Riley flinched as the clang echoed through the counter above her.
“I watched the video from last night,” I told her. “I saw what happened to the hot chocolate. The footage got deleted though. Not sure how. I didn’t do it. I tried to show Daniel, and he—”
“You saw it?” Her voice squeaked like a mouse. She sniffled and peeked out from behind the rice. “You actually saw it? The ghost?”
“I saw the hot chocolate levitate,” I explained. “What did you see?”
“A woman.”
“What did she look like?”
She trembled so violently that the rice shifted and threatened to spill over. I righted the bag before Xavier had something else to complain about. Riley tucked her head between her knees like she was trying to disappear into the darkness of the cupboard.
“Never mind,” I said since the questions weren’t helping Riley’s fragile state of mind. “Forget I asked. Don’t think about her. But can you come out of that cupboard?”
She didn’t move. I sighed, tugged the rice out, and inserted as much of my top half as would fit into the poorly ventilated space. Riley hugged me.
“Please don’t leave me,” she whispered. “No one else believes me.”
“I won’t leave you.”
I stayed there, half in and half out of the cupboard, until Riley’s breath evened out. When she seemed ready, I drew her out of the cupboard into the kitchen’s fluorescent lights.
“Get off the floor!” Xavier scolded, making Riley jump.
I ignored him as I helped Riley to her feet. “Come on,” I said to her. “Let’s have breakfast together. Nothing is ever as bad when you have a giant plate of chocolate chip pancakes and an enormous cup of coffee in front of you. Well, maybe not the coffee because you’re still growing. But tea! You can have tea. Do you like tea?”
Riley actually laughed as I rambled. “I like Irish breakfast tea.”
“Xavier, make us some Irish breakfast tea,” I ordered the cook. “But have Matisse or Karli bring it out. Your mustache is scaring Riley.”
His mustache bristled, but it wasn’t copious enough to cover his indignation at being ordered about by a guest of the resort. “You—!”
“Thanks, Xavier!” I called as I piloted Riley out of the kitchen. “We’ll put in our order soon. Don’t spit in our food, okay? If you do, I’ll know.”
I gave a cheeky wink over my shoulder at the Frenchman. As soon as the kitchen door shut behind us, he threw a stale baguette against it. Riley cackled, her trauma from that morning all but forgotten. In the lounge, we picked a table near the window to let the sun warm us through the glass, but a layer of clouds moved in to block out the sky.
“Those are storm clouds,” Riley said, squinting up at the gray dome. “Look at how fast they’re moving. It’s going to be a big one.”
“You can tell just by the clouds?”
“When you’ve lived on a mountain for your whole life, you pay attention to what the sky’s trying to tell you,” she said. “No one should be out on the runs right now. It’s going to dump.”
“Good thing we’re inside.” I slid the breakfast menu across the table to her and open
ed my own. “I’m content with a cozy day in from the cold. Doesn’t King and Queens have a theater room? We could take it over and watch whatever you want.”
Riley flipped through the menu, closed it, and flipped through it again from the back cover. “Did you actually see something on the camera?”
Apparently, I was never going to get used to the involuntary tremble that shot through my entire body whenever Riley mentioned a ghost. Madame Lucia never reacted with such fear in her parlour. She was always stout and stalwart, confident in her ability to control whatever spirits passed through that apartment. None of it was real, of course, but why should my attitude toward the spiritual world change now? I needed Madame Lucia’s confidence more than ever.
“I keep trying to work it out in my head,” I said, keeping my voice low though Karli was the only other person in the bar. “How that mug could have lifted off the table on its own or how the vase fell off the shelf my first night here. The feeling I get sometimes late at night. I keep thinking there has to be a reasonable, scientific explanation for it or that my mind is screwing with me.”
“I thought that too at first,” Riley said. “But what are the odds that the two of us are having a conjoined mental breakdown?”
“I don’t know. What are they?” I asked. “We’re both cooped up in this resort. No one’s around. We only have each other for company. Cabin fever is a real thing. People have been known to hallucinate—”
“I’m not hallucinating,” Riley snapped.
“I didn’t say you were,” I said. “I’m sorry. The last thing you need is another person insinuating that you’re crazy. I know you’re not. I just meant that maybe this place is messing with our heads.”
Riley folded her cloth napkin into an origami swan and set it on top of the fake candle in the middle of the table. “You and I both know that’s not the case, but you have to admit it to yourself before we can do anything about it. You may not be the Madame Lucia from your YouTube videos, but you are something. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to feel that thing you were talking about. The prickle on your neck. I get that too. I told my dad about it, and he said it was goosebumps. No one else feels it. Just you and me. That’s gotta mean something, right?”
